Although it is “Verified” now, Fallout 4 on Steam Deck seems to be struggling with crashes, halved FPS and unreachable graphics settings…

Fallout 4 is now officially Verified on Steam Deck after the new “next-gen” update, but frustratingly, performance on Valve’s handheld is now decidedly worse. Some graphics settings have become unavailable, and crashes are more common. This isn’t the first example of a game on Steam Deck getting worse as its rating improves.

However, Valve now needs to answer some important questions, or it risks causing chaos in the rating system.

The most apparent “improvement” is the removal of the Bethesda Launcher. However, this gave us the only option to change the graphics settings, which means that it is now impossible to make any changes.

In addition, the frame rate graphs within the performance interface are inaccurate. So when you seemingly run the game at the OLED Deck’s full 90Hz refresh capability, the game instead runs at 45fps. A fix for this was identified by a user on r/SteamDeck (see image below and link at end of article). However, for a game that is classified as “Verified” by Valve, this should not happen.

Finally, frequent crashes have been added to the game that seem to happen randomly. All of this disappointed many Fallout fans who thought the new Verified rating would mean positive changes. Instead, it’s the exact opposite.

The framerate is also noticeably lower than what Deck indicates, and the performance overview graph and the framerate graph are incredibly erratic.

Fallout 4’s incorrect rating can indicate more severe problems

It’s frustrating to see issues like this in a game that Valve deems worthy of the highest level of scrutiny. This raises further questions about the state of the other games. For Horizon Forbidden West, Steam Deck OLED has excellent performance. All you need to do is make minor changes to the graphics settings.

However, for some reason, Valve has rated this game as “Unsupported”. Many Steam Deck owners take Valve’s word for it. Of course, you can be confident that your testing is comprehensive and accurate. But these latest problems threaten that trust.

Instead, the Steam Deck compatibility criteria now appear to be just a tick-off list with very little meaning.

Maybe it’s time for Valve to rethink how they handle game testing and rating.

Source: Reddit